Finger: A breakthrough policy at UTSA

Brenda Tracy speaks about her story as a rape survivor and her "Set The Expectation" campaign at the 2018 Houston Football Coaches Clinic. UTSA recently adopted the “Tracy Rule,” a zero-tolerance policy for sexual assault and violent behavior among athletes.

Photo: Yi-Chin Lee /Houston Chronicle

Brenda Tracy glanced down at her feet, took a breath and focused. She was wearing shoes. The shoes were on a stage. The stage was in Texas.

This is how she reminded herself she wasn’t in that apartment again. This is how she made it through another reliving of the worst day of her life. This is how she kept from breaking down in the middle of the nightmarish story she has told over and over again in auditoriums and meeting rooms, all in an effort to keep it from happening to someone else.

The athletes, coaches and adminstrators sat in riveted silence at UTSA last February, just like they do at every college campus where the 45-year-old Tracy musters up the strength to recount the horrific 1998 day when she was gang-raped for six hours by four men, including two Oregon State football players. She spares no detail, even though the details inevitably send her hurtling into the sights and sounds and smells of unthinkable trauma.

“I’ve told my story 100 times,” Tracy said. “Every time, I go into that apartment. And I can’t go into that apartment without crying, and feeling scared, and feeling shame.”

She puts herself through this because young men need to hear it. She puts herself through this to remind people that when a star player is accused of sexual assault, perhaps the biggest concern shouldn’t be about how many games he’s going to miss. She puts herself through this because she believes she can spur action and change, even in a fight that often can feel hopeless.

After months of collaboration between the activist and the university that began with Tracy’s presentation and was sparked in part by the reaction to it, UTSA announced Tuesday the implementation of the “Tracy Rule,” which she called “the most comprehensive serious conduct rule in the history of college sports.”

Beginning this semester, no current or prospective player with a history of serious misconduct — whether it be pleading guilty or no contest to a violent felony or misdemeanor, or having been found delinquent in juvenile court, or having been disciplined by another school for such offenses — will be eligible to practice, compete or receive athletic financial aid.

The rule includes a waiver option for those with “exceptional circumstances,” but all of those cases must be examined by a five-person review panel that includes UTSA’s Title IX coordinator, and also receive an OK from the school president or a vice president outside of athletics.

The long and short of it is that in a college sports environment where violent offenders and sexual predators can slip through the cracks and find second chances at new schools, this is a zero-tolerance policy with some real teeth.

“It’s all about transparency and accountability,” Tracy said. “It’s a way to create a safer culture on campus. A lot of places are kind of averse to these policies. The leadership there (at UTSA) embraced it.”

In light of the recent campus outcry over the university’s response to allegations of sexual assault and dating violence by students who have been named in anonymous flyers but have not been charged with a crime, it might be natural to wonder if this was a public-relations response.

But Tracy, who said she was invited to speak to UTSA’s student-athletes before those allegations became public, said the prevalance of sexual assault on campuses across America means that whether or not a policy is a response to a problem — or a means to prevent one — is beside the point.

“Technically, every campus that implements this rule could be doing it in response to an outcry,” she said.

In this case, Roadrunners athletic director Lisa Campos said, it started with Tracy, who Campos had previously met while at a previous career stop. Campos invited her to UTSA, and after her presentation, several athletes who’d attended the speech approached administrators pushing them to do more.

For Tracy, the fact that UTSA took action represented a breakthrough. As part of her nonprofit, Set The Expectation, the usual routine is this: Tracy speaks to athletes on a college campus, and then they sign a pledge to fight the culture surrounding sexual violence. It often ends with nothing more concrete than that.

For two years, she sat on the NCAA commission to combat sexual violence and fought for a sweeping national policy, to no avail.

“You can lose your eligibility if someone gives you money,” Tracy said. “Rape is still not an NCAA violation.”

Last year, there was progress. The Big Sky Conference enacted league-wide policy — not quite as sweeping as UTSA’s, but close — using Tracy’s recommendations. UTSA is the first place to institute such a rule at the university level, and Tracy said she now aims to “take it everywhere (she) can.”

The problem isn’t, after all, just limited college sports. These issues exist at the high-school level, and rarely a month goes by when it doesn’t come up in the NFL. If the Tracy Rule spreads, though, she said it can “disrupt the pipeline.”

As she continues to work toward that end, Tracy will keep telling her story. She’ll keep venturing into that apartment, as painful as it remains. And every so often, she will look down at her feet, to remind herself where she is now.

“I live one inch from my trauma, 24/7,” Tracy said. “I don’t tell people, ‘It’s been a long time, and you’ll get over it.’ You never do.”

Mike Finger has worked for the Express-News since 1999, writing about the Texas Longhorns, the Big 12, the NBA and the NFL before becoming a sports columnist. He's covered 13 Spurs postseasons, six Final Fours and more than a dozen college bowl games.